I am, surprisingly, wishing that we had a system similar to how Democrats vote. In their caucuses if your candidate doesn’t receive 15% of the vote in your precinct, you are asked to pick a candidate who does meet the 15% threshold.
We wouldn’t have all these 1% candidates soaking up votes.
That's tinkering with the will of the voter. Yeah... I know caucuses are not voters, but you get the idea.
Regardless of what I think of those 1-percenters, their supporters have every right to voice their opinion and to have it registered. It's a signal to the electorate that the party bosses know what the voters want, even if the voters don't.
Even a "protest vote" has a message.
The D's have that rule to prevent a serious challenge to their annointed one. If Martin O'Malley's caucus-goers wanted to vote for Hillary, they'd have done it.
Because of delegate allocation rounding, the Iowa minimum is at least 4-5% to qualify for a convention delegate vote.
Iowa GOP caucus rules are quite a bit different this cycle.